One of America’s greatest artists left an impressive legacy in San Diego, the hard materials and artistry of his sculptures enduring the years in many of the region’s public spaces.

Donal Hord, best-known for his monumental stone figures, was born as Donald Horr in Prentice, Wis., in 1902. His parents divorced when he was only 7; his unhappy mother supposedly renamed her son to spite his father by moving the last “d” from his first name and adding it to his last name.

Donal and his mother moved to Seattle in 1914. Here he began to display an interest in art by taking lessons in watercolors and carving his first small pieces of sculpture. The young artist was sickly as a child and a bout with rheumatic fever at age 12 left him with a weakened heart. After a doctor recommended a warmer climate, mother and son boarded a steamship for San Diego.

Attending high school was difficult for Donal because of his poor health. But he was a regular visitor to the San Diego Public Library, where “he was always underfoot,” recalled a librarian. A voracious reader, Hord checked out books by the armload.

Years later, he would show his gratitude to the library by donating his large personal collection of books and many works of art.

At age 15, Hord began taking art classes from Anna Valentien at the San Diego Evening High School. Valentien was a notable figure in San Diego’s blossoming Arts and Crafts movement and had studied sculpture with Auguste Rodin in Paris. From Valentien, Hord learned the rudiments of modeling and sculpture.

He continued his education in the 1920s, aided by grants and scholarships. He learned bronze casting at the Santa Barbara School of Arts and spent 11 months in Mexico studying ancient and modern forms of Native American art that would strongly influence his personal artistic style.

Most of Hord’s early work was in bronzes, which required clay modeling and then casting. The process was frustrating at times; a bad cast could ruin weeks or months of work. Hord came to prefer direct mediums, such as hardwood or stone.

He was particularly fascinated by materials used by ancient sculptors who’d carved their work directly on the materials. Diorite, for example, was a favorite hard stone used in Middle Eastern civilizations such as Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria. A famed work in diorite still existing today is the Code of Hammurabi, inscribed on a 7-foot pillar in about 1790 B.C.

Hord once explained to a newspaper reporter that he chose hard mediums because “they were such beautiful materials.” Sculpting in hardwoods such rosewood or lignum vitae or rock like diorite or jade was difficult.

“In fact, I would much rather have used something easier to cut,” he admitted. But hard surfaces could be worked with precision and took a finish that was beautiful to touch as well beautiful to see.

In 1934 Hord was accepted to the Depression-era Federal Art Project and given a salary of $75 a month. The opportunity to carve in stone followed. For “La Tehuana,” a patio fountain in the courtyard of the House of Hospitality in Balboa Park, Hord used Indiana limestone to create the figure of an American Indian woman pouring water from an olla jar.